


Moribund

by baeberiibungh



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: AU, Angst, Crying, Death, Funeral, M/M, Murder, Revenge, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 17:41:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5793823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baeberiibungh/pseuds/baeberiibungh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal Lecter is a mortician, who does good restorative work for his clients so that everyone who leaves his funeral looks like they are just sleeping...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moribund

Hannibal is a complete professional and in his environment. The AC is running steadily as he works on the corpse lying before him on the stretcher. The plastic sheet covering the body had been pushed down just above their bare groin and the wide gawping cut in the abdomen smells bad even though Hannibal had already cleaned up all the blood and sucked the rest out of the body. He is now sticking the cut, made with a sharp knife on a simple mugging gone wrong in a dark street.

Hannibal sews the cut with small threads, not wanting to put too much pressure on the skin nearby as it has lost its elasticity. If sewn too tight or too lose it will just tear though and that will be another mess to clear. So he makes neat little stitches into the already decomposing flesh and closes up the ugly opening into the stomach. After that, Hannibal takes off the sheet completely and takes out his trimmer. He trims the man’s jaw as well as his pubes which had been cleaned meticulously by Hannibal already.

Next, he dabs the makeup on the torso of the man as well as the shins and one hip as they show bruises standing dark against his skin even though he no longer has any blood to stay the location in stark contrast. Hannibal covers him in a foundation before layering it with a shading powder so that the skin looks completely unbroken. No one will see that of course as he will be completely clothed and it’s not like the man is alive either to be disconcerted by the bruises any longer.

Yet Hannibal persists, covering each of the bruises in a light film of makeup so that his body shows unblemished and even. The man was pale when he had been alive, and now he wore the pallor of the dead. After the makeup had been done on the body, Hannibal easily manhandled the man enough to get him suited up in an expensive looking pair of pants and shirts with a coat on. There will be a small flower pin of gardenias in his buttonhole when Hannibal is done.

After suiting the body up, making sure that the suit is pressed and the creases show, that the shirt cuffs come out of the coat hands and the collars are placed perfectly, the lapels displayed nicely and the hands crossed over his chest for the time being. It always feels wrong to Hannibal how a dead person weights. One doesn’t know how different it feels to shove and push a dead body around than a live one – a live one will always give to the push and maybe reciprocate, the dead just lie there.

After making sure that the man is as suited as he will ever get for his funeral and after Hannibal put on the dog themed socks and the brushed till they shined shoes, Hannibal turned to the face and found the world dim in the periphery. He drew in a few long breaths, closing his eyes, his jaw clenching under the skin as he sought to get his emotions under control. He can do this, he can do this, he will do this, Hannibal repeats to himself as he slowly opens his eyes. There are a few indistinct thunks from the floor above but Hannibal pays them no mind, accurately guessing that it is just Jack setting the things up there.

The man lying on the stretcher before him is beautiful, still. The lips are cracked and splitting at places, but they still retain their full shape. The curly brown locks, delicately cleaned by Hannibal with the shower attachment when he had bathed the dead man with his favourite shampoo early, are pushed back from his face, face that shows a broken nose and a black eye. The eyes have already been filled up and stitched up so that they look normal and not sunken in. The lips too have been stitched up, with cotton balls filling the mouth so as to give it definition.

Hannibal slowly starts brushing his stuff onto the face, covering up the black eye, the way the nose did not sit well when he rearranged the bones, the way those brows were not scowling and looking at him over thick rimmed glasses, Hannibal catalogued all of those in some distant corner of his mind, which was still faintly screaming into the current void of his soul. However, outwardly, he just kept on with his job, his hands moving via muscle memories as he moved around letting his body basically take over.

When he was completely done and the last thing remained to do was let the body down into the coffin so that it could be pushed into the viewing room so that everyone who came would shed tears over their lapels and then cover it with the lid and then with six feet of loose soil and earth, Hannibal looked, really looked at the man lying before him, the love of his life, the man who was a miracle for Hannibal each day he had loved Hannibal, the best part of his soul, the whole of his heart and the reason for his being.

Will looked so peaceful lying on the stretcher, his colours manipulated by Hannibal so much that it just looked he got a mild tan. But Hannibal knew, he knew that Will was not sleeping, not because how he was lying on a stretcher meant for dead people, not how they were in the bowels of a funeral home, not even the hours Hannibal spent on making Will as lifelike as he could, but because Will never slept so stiffly. He always slept on his side, curled up on Hannibal, nuzzling into his heat and his soft curls tickling the underside of Hannibal’s jaw. It felt like something distant, this comprehension, this drawing of conclusion that as lively Will looked, he was not alive because he did not sleep like that.

Jack finds Hannibal weeping and crying loudly on the floor some time later, Will’s dead body clutched in his hands and trying to kiss Will’s sewn mouth as if trying to give his own breath to the dead boy. Hannibal has always been so stoic, with his old man charm and twinkling eyes, that it hurts, hurts Jack to see the man like this, cry so despondently, so wretchedly as he holds on to his dead partner. There are people already upstairs come to say their goodbyes, but Jack makes no move to get Hannibal off Will right now. Hannibal howls into the sky and Jack curses the fool who killed Will, who ended the brief life of sweet, sweet, Will and took Hannibal to the grave as well. 

Hannibal spends the service sitting by the coffin, leaking tears onto the wooden lid and all the others who came, come because they had known Will, had worked with Will, all stare at him and feel infinite sadness sit on their chest looking at Hannibal. No man had perhaps loved another like Will did Hannibal, except that Hannibal loved Will just that bit more and now, now it just felt as if they had walked into the double funeral of both.

Jack promises everyone who talks to him that he will be keeping an eye on Hannibal, even though his words seem futile. Hannibal may never return from this and there is simply nothing anyone could do anything about it. Hannibal does not go to the cemetery, unable to face his Will being buried, but goes home and burrows into Will’s clothes from the hamper that still retains his smell and falls asleep still crying and with Will’s name on his lips. He dreams of Will in his arms and when he wakes, his life feels like a nightmare that he will never wake from.

Three weeks later, police find seven people dead in an empty house, all killed execution style. They all had priors for mugging and assault. Hannibal resumes his duties at the funeral home the day after.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Japanese movie Departures and one of my mom's fav books. Unbetaed. Thanks for reading. Kudos and comments are always, always welcome!


End file.
